Allie B’s Tow at Sea

The sun was setting when we met Allie B

and her tow:  Weeks 533 with Robert as tail boat.  I’d seen the big crane only a week or so earlier doing some lifts in the sixth boro.  This blog has featured this crane in a number of sixth boro jobs and moves going all the way back to hoisting US Airways 1549 out of the icy Hudson 14 years ago. 

At this point, Allie B and tow were westbound at the west end of Buzzards Bay

on their way to the Cape, or so it appeared later.  And yes, as contradictory as that previous sentence sounds, I meant it that way.

Had our meeting been a half hour later, I’d not have these photos. 

 

Allie B has fascinated me since her epic 2009 voyage, when she took barge Brooklyn Bridge to the Black Sea. 

 

Like I said, it was a fortunate meeting as we all sailed in the last minutes of brilliant light before the long winter’s night.

 

 

Enjoy the light show. 

 

All photos, WVD. 

B, D, and 533

From right to left then, that would be Allie B, Sarah D, and Weeks 533.  

The two tugs assisted the crane barge that lifted a large electrical component onto a many-wheeled trailer inside the Red Hook container port.  I’ll post my photos of the truck on my next truckster! post. 

Well over a decade ago, I traveled up to Quincy MA to see Allie B move a long time piece of the landscape out of Quincy and over to the Black Sea port of Mangalia, Romania.  What piece of landscape, you ask?  It was the Fore River Goliath Crane, now painted yellow and set in a yard operated by Damen, although it seems it may now be inactive again. 

Landing the crane at Red Hook yesterday, lifting the cargo, and departing all happened quite fast, less than 90 minutes from arrival to departure. 

 

 

 

 

Happy solstice. Next stop summer.

All photos, WVD.   Hat tip Cyclone Shark.

 

Cranes: Weeks 533 Again

Here was the first post in this series, but Wednesday I caught the crane again, this time being handled by a regular in the boro as well as a newcomer named Brinn Courtney, who appeared here once before as Patricia Winslow. 

Thinking the better shot would be with Manhattan as background, we opted for the NY side,

but as we passed on our way to another job, we noticed the green stack on the starboard side of the tow.  I’d not seen that earlier and had not taken time to look at AIS.

At first I thought Charles James, but her red paint has been covered over a few years ago, so i finally looked at AIS and saw

it was Brinn Courtney, a new-to-Stasinos boat. 

I would have taken more of Brinn Courtney, but we were already late for a rendezvous.  

Welcome to the boro, Brinn Courtney.  She appeared here once about eight years ago as Patricia Winslow.

All photos on the fly, WVD. Thanks to the New York Media Boat for conveyance.

Note:  By this time tomorrow, I will be out of the boro and the robots in tugster tower will again have their virtual fingers and hands on the controls.  I’ve no idea how long I’ll be away on this gallivant, nor what the WiFi situation will be.  Go, robots!

 

Retro Sixth Boro 50 A

June 2012 was pivotal for me.  A photo sent along by a friend alerted me to Canal commerce–Canadian corn– entering the US at Oswego, a place I knew something of from my youth. 

If that was a spark, then the breeze that fanned it was an invitation to do my trial article for Professional Mariner magazine, which led me to Kingston NY, the mouth of the Rondout, and a project involving use of a half century old tug Cornell to do TOAR signoffs.  My most recent article in the magazine came out today and can be seen here.

On that assignment, I was privileged to have a mentor, Brian Gauvin, do the photography.

Other big events for June 2012 included the movement of shuttle Enterprise from JFK airport ,

ultimately to the Intrepid Museum to be

hoisted onto the flight deck as part of the display, now covered.

My daughter went off to Brasil (again) and the Amazon, leading me to go there myself a year later, fearing she’d never return because she loved it so much there.

I’d given her a camera before she went, and was rewarded with some quite interesting photos, like these small motor boats that looked almost like slippers …

with straight shafts coming straight out of air-cooled engines.

During my trip up to the Rondout, I stopped in Newburgh, where replicas of La Niña and Pinta, crafted using traditional techniques on the Una River in Bahia, Brasil, attracted crowds, one of many stops along the great loop route. 

Other festivities on the Hudson that summer . . .

included the sails and music associated with the Clearwater Festival, and of course the small boats moving in some of the venues.

 

Patty Nolan and Augie were the small tugs, and of course the sailboats including Mystic Whaler, Woody Guthrie,

 

and of course the sloop Clearwater.  The Clearwater organization will not be doing a music festival in June 2022.  Mystic Whaler is now working in Oxnard CA at the Channel Islands Museum.

Summer time and the living is easy well, at least it feels that way some days . . . . 

All photos, except the first one, WVD.  That first photo was taken by Allan H. Seymour.

 

Inaugurations

January, once every four years, involves a formality that we mark today.  Inaugurate has a strange derivation, you figure it out.  With this post, I’m in no way intending to divine futures.  Really it’s just sets of photos taken four years apart. 

Ice and lightship yacht Nantucket floated in the harbor in mid January 2009. Do you remember what else was literally in the harbor?

Weeks tugs stood by ready to move a barge underneath the airplane when Weeks 533 lifted the Airbus 320 from harbor waters that had cushioned its fall . . . twelve years ago. 

Next inauguration day, 2013, I watched fishermen drag clams from the bottom of Gravesend Bay.

Rebel, destined not to run much longer, pushed a barge across the Upper Bay with an incomplete WTC beyond.  Many more details had not yet sprouted on the Manhattan skyline.

Mid January 2017 . . . CMA CGM Nerval headed for the port with Thomas J. Brown off its starboard.  Here‘s what I wrote about this photo and others exactly four years ago.

Nerval still needed to make its way under the yet-to-be completed raising of the Bayonne Bridge, assisted by JRT Moran.  This view was quite different in mid January 2017.   As of today, this container ship in on the Mediterranean on a voyage between Turkey and Morocco.

All photos, WVD, taken in mid January at four-year intervals.  Nothing should be read into the choice of photos.  Sorry I have no photos from January 20, 2005, because back then I didn’t take as many photos, and four years before that, I was still using a film camera, took fewer photos in a year than now I do on certain days, and that skyline above was very different.

My inaugural event . . .  cleaning my desk, my office, and my kitchen.   If you’re looking for an activity, something might need cleaning. Laundry?   Yup, work after work.  All inaugurations call for clean ups.

And if you want to buy that lightship yacht above, here‘s the info.

 

Cranes: Weeks 533

Weeks 533 has credibility: she lifted the USAir Flight 1549 Airbus A320 out of the Hudson back almost 11 years ago and more.  So the other day when I was on my way to “yon” and saw her “hither” and she was working with Susan Miller, I decided to linger and inquire.

That’s when I noticed the pier 11 Wall Street float was partially submerged, and a heavy lift crew was aboard securing cables.

Besides that crew, one tug and Susan Miller, even the Green Lady was craning her neck overtop the ferry and over in my direction, paying attention.

 

When I managed to board a conveyance and get to the middle of the East River . . .

I saw there were actually four tugs involved,  two Dann tugs and another Miller tug.

Once the landing barge was lifted over the spuds and large pumps installed–I think that’s what I saw–Susan Miller whisked the barge away to be repaired, rehabbed.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who calls this another feat for Weeks 533.

Lots more tugster cranes here.

Diller Island

I walked along the Hudson and past the Vessel the other day because it was flat and scenic.   I also wanted to see what progress was happening at Pier 55, aka on Diller Island.

Beneath, from small boats  .  . . these workers attended to several of the 132 pots that make up the island.

Michael Miller stood by Weeks 526, as

at this moment did  Shawn Miller.

 

Meanwhile, coming upriver was another Weeks crane, the 533,  with Susan Miller on port bow and

Elizabeth supplying power.

 

 

At a certain moment, Shawn departed the 526 and headed over to the Weeks 533

to assist.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who recently saw Weeks and Miller tugs working on 533 here.

 

 

Retro Sixth Boro 10

In only ten years, a lot of changes have happened in the sixth boro.  I wish I’d started this blog 30 years ago to document even more, but 1988 predated blogs, the internet, and digital photography.  Wow . . . how did people relate back then?

Joking aside, let’s see some that have moved on.  On January 11, 2009 Kristin Poling, the 1934 tanker, still operated.

January 12.  Sun Right, built 1993 and already dead, moved westbound in the KVK escorted by Eileen McAllister.  What’s remarkable to me is how large the tug looks in compared to the ship in contrast to tugs today looking miniature on the stern of a ULCV.

Five minutes later . . . Odin.  Indeed I was smitten by this unusual vessel, which has since moved to the South and lost her ability to rise up as if on hind legs.  I’ve no sense of what it was like to work on her.

January 15.  Never did I imagine then that this Dean Reinauer would be replaced by this Dean.

January 18  The boro’s big story of January 2009, of course, was the plane crash in the Hudson.  Here the efforts to lift the USAir Flight 1549 out of the water have just begun.  Thomas stands by Weeks 533.

January 29  NYC DEP’s Red Hook had just arrived in the harbor, and it seemed she was escorted everywhere by James Turecamo. Sine then, NYC DEP has added a  whole new generation of sludge tankers aka honey boats.

January 31  Taurus has become Joker, another intriguingly named tugboat operated not in NYC but Philadelphia area by Hays Tug and Launch, with fleet mate names like Purple Hays, High Roller, Grape Ape, and more.

Let’s leave it there.  Happy new year’s greetings still ring in my ears, leaving me with an ongoing inexplicable smile and desire to treat all with respect.  Go out of your way to smile at someone today.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, whose smile gets hidden by a respirator whenever he goes into the archives on Tugster Tower.

 

Leaning In

[Note:  investigation of the Christmas pirate break-in is ongoing at Tugster Tower.  Culprits once located and questioned may face a job offer. ]

Weeks 533, the one that lifted Sully’s plane out of the Hudson, was moving up to either Port Elizabeth or Newark, using a three-tug configuration.

What impressed me was the lean-in, seen here by Michael Miller and

relayed by Catherine.

 

Causing this huge box-in-the-water to turn to starboard takes a lot of persuasion.

Thomas Weeks, likely providing the bulk of the forward movement, stays largely even keeled.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, whose done more posts here featuring this crane.

 

Random Tugs 231

Let’s start out at Little Falls NY, above Lock E-17, where Jay Bee V had just departed and was now delivering the Glass Barge to the wall there.  Notice C. L. Churchill along the left edge of the photo.

Here above Lock C-7, it’s Margot.

On the Hudson River, tis is my first closeup view of Liz Vinik, formerly Maryland.

Westbound on the East River, it’s Sea Wolf moving uncontainerized thrown-aways.

Farther east, it’s Hudson with a fuel barge,

and meeting her, it’s Morgan Reinauer with the same.

Notice here, looking toward the Queensboro Bridge, Morgan and Hudson.

Here at the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge project, it’s  Dorothy J.

and to close this post out back on the Hudson, it’s Elizabeth, moving Weeks 533.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.